Harry Hardiner
Harold "Harry" Hardiner (August 8, 1962 - disappeared December 1999) was an American serialist writer of short stories, plays, at least one unproduced screenplay, and the Rosewire novel series. He is particularly remembered for his student-cum-warlord Johnny Kite as well as the enduring mystery of his current whereabouts. Hardiner is often referred to as the "Father of Expansionism " and his novel Hunt and Peck is sometimes attributed as the inception of web literature. In 2008, a "new Rosewire novel", simply titled Rosewire, was supposedly released by the Hardiner estate, though the family denies any prior knowledge of the work. Some have suggested the authorship actually belongs to the author's longtime editor, Maxence Lawrence . Life and career Early life Harold Hardiner was born in Bookbright, TN in 1962 when the town was still county seat. Not much is known about Hardiner's childhood, but references in his single extant journal suggest a close friendship from an early age with "the Judge," presumably Judge Ernest Crater , mayor of Bookbright until 1972, when he was elected State Senator before dying in a plane crash. Rodonymagists (see: Rodonymatology ) believe the crash had a profound effect on the young Hardiner, and probably inspired the fate of the Judge in Election Day (see: Election Day (novel)). Critic and biographer Rex Patch disagrees; he believes "the Judge" referred to a character in one of many paracosms the author retained well into adulthood. Sometime between 1980 and 1885, Hardiner left Bookbright and "bounced around a little," never earning a full degree, before he landed in New York City in 1990, where he immediately began submitting short stories to literary magazines. Maxence Lawrence, then editor of The Fledgeling Egg , published Hardiner's first story, "Johnny Kite and Friend" , as Lawrence put it in his foreward, "after substantial rewrites." It has been suggested that it in this time, the two future authors began a romantic entanglement that would last the rest of their lives. What is certain is that "Johnny Kite and Friend" is the inception of the Rosewire series, and a long series of interrelated stories and plays the author would produce over the next decade. Writing period (1990-1999) Little is known about the writing process of the Rosewire books. Hardiner was stubbornly private, and most of his notes are yet to be found. However, correspondence with contemporaries such as mystery novelist and longtime editor Maxence Lawrence and sporadic interviews with critic Rex Patch have shed intriguing clues on Hardiner's approach to writing. The great speed with which Harry Hardiner was able to produce such large novels leads most Rodonymagists to believe he wrote them, perhaps out of sequence, over the course of his entire life, or at least had always kept very detailed notes on characters, plotlines, and settings. There are even suggestions (from Hardiner's single extant journal) that the series may have been a collaboration with or built upon the earlier work of a family member. Barring this possibility, Harry Hardiner was extremely prolific, nearly on the scale of such authors as Stephen King or James Patterson, turning out a new long novel almost every year from 1990 until his disappearance in late 1999. In 1996, just before publication of Rosewire 7, Hardiner bought a plot of land in Murfreesboro, TN, and named it "the Maghreb"; today, his grounds are open to the public and called Hardiner Hollow . The grounds feature a peacock corral and a large man-made lake, as well as the Rosewire Museum , housed in Hardiner's modest residence. The vanishing of Harry Hardiner and the gruesome discovery of a body in a refrigerator on the grounds by a young museum visitor in 2008 reinforce pervasive rumors about hauntings and monstrous creatures in the house, the lake, and surrounding woodlands. Critic Rex Patch calls Hardiner Hollow "the only place Rise makes any sense" and suggests that the activities of earth batteries or radioactive minerals in the surrounding landscape may have directly led to the author's eventual collapse and caused the flashing lights neighbors recalled the night Hardiner was discovered missing. Relationship with Maxence Lawrence There is no doubt that the mystery novelist Maxence Lawrence served as Harry Hardiner's editor for most of the duration of the Rosewire series. It is uncertain the amount of influence Lawrence had over the finished product, but the editor's meticulous journals note when he edited what. Curiously, Lawrence only edited books 1-4, 7, and 9—or at least, there are only records of these projects. Lawrence biographer and founder of "Team Maxence" Jezra Jaban suggets that from Halides onwards, a somewhat comfortable relationship between the two authors became petty, estranged, and sometimes violent. When Hardiner disappeared in 1999, Maxence Lawrence was at a series of holiday parties in New York City, highly visible by the tabloid circuit. It wasn't until much later that Lawrence was ever put forth as suspect in Hardiner's disappearence, and then the prevailing theory which placed him at fault involved hired hitmen and an elaborate staging. Jazra Jaban's film Max Larry, Haunted Fairy put forth the theory that as a lover spurned, Lawrence put a hit out on Hardiner, who went into hiding. The film portrays Hardiner as a vengeful juggernaut, who elaborately stages a snare to lure Lawrence to Hardiner Hollow through psychological abuse. The thriller shows influence by Gaslight and Ten Little Indians, with a "subtle touch" that made Roger Ebert compare Jaban's work to Hitchcock's Rebecca. Jaban herself says the film is only fiction, inspired, she says, by Poe's "Cask of Admontillado". Most serious investigators (see: Harry Hunters ) discount Maxence Lawrence as a suspect in Hardiner's disappearence entirely. Disappearance On December 20, 1999, neighbors in Murfreesboro, TN reported seeing bright lights coming from Hardiner Hollow. Police and fire officials arrived at the scene expecting a blaze or a burglary, but instead discovered Harry Hardiner's table set and soup boiling over on the stove. Etched or burned into the kitchen wall was the word "MESHARE ". Harry Hardiner remains missing as of 2012, and his family had him legally declared dead in early 2007. Speculation as to Hardiner's current whereabouts, as well as the significance of the lights above Hardiner Hollow, abounds, but Hardiner's disappearence remains one of the most baffling mysteries of the decade. Most fans assumed soon after his disappearence was announced on the news that the whole operation was staged to promote the final Rosewire book and the author would materialize when the tenth novel did. When his publisher officially filed him as a missing person, a more dedicated manhunt turned up no evidence of Hardiner in his hometown, at the homes of family or friends, or any corporately-held properties. Non-fiction novelist Rupert Smyth-Price wrote an account of his search for Harry Hardiner and released it under the title Harry Hunters in 2001. Since, a small but dedicated group of "Harry Hunters" has continued the search for the author well past a decade after his disappearence. "MESHARE" theories Rodonymagists immediately declared "MESHARE" to be a clue to Hardiner's whereabouts, perhaps in anagram or coded reference to the Rosewire series. Theories over the years have ranged from a poor transliteration of a town in the Middle East to the name of a long-deleted file on the author's personal computer. Perhaps the most intriguing hypothesis was put forth in 2009 by English author Neil Gaiman, who noted in Sandman miniseries Death With Mango Extracts that the only pages of Rise where the letters M, S, H, A, R, and two Es are capitalized are pages 10, 20, 23, 35, 86, and the title page. Recombined (and treating the title page as zero), Gaiman demonstrated that Hardiner may have been giving us geographical coordinates (35 0 20N, 86 10 23W) which are very close to Hardiner's hometown of Bookbright. Gaiman suggests "MESHARE" was geographical wordplay that Hardiner had been toying with, and that the author suffered a breakdown and returned home. Whether or not he made it to Bookbright, Gaiman "leaves to the Harry Hunters." "Missing manuscript" theory Many Harry Hunters have hypothesized that something in the final Rosewire book (either A Bed, Rosewire, or another unfound manuscript) would have been dangerous for Harry Hardiner to reveal. Reconstructions of his final weeks show that Harry Hardiner had visited Oak Ridge and several other military bases in Tennessee and the surrounding states. While handlers there have said he only researched "military life," skeptics believe that Hardiner stumbled upon a government plot or advanced technology that he intended to reveal through his final Rosewire novel. Other "missing manuscript " theories suggest that Hardiner had heavily borrowed to publish the last few Rosewire novels and that the last manuscript was "held hostage" by mobsters until Hardiner could repay his loan. This theory doesn't explain why such a manuscript hasn't been since revealed, although some suggest that the Casa Nostra was behind the release of Rosewire 10 ''in early 2008. Zachary Osgood , erstwhile editor of ''The Rosewire Companion, has suggested that Hardiner would reveal family secrets in his final book and that he was "called away" to Bookbright where he either resides today in hiding or met his end. The Hardiner family has been famously reluctant to speak to the press, but there is little to no evidence of Harry Hardiner being in contact with his family, and most serious Harry Hunters find this claim absurd. While it is possible that Rosewire 10 is the "missing manuscript" from an unsealed safety deposit box, the western seems to discount the rest of the series entirely and does not contain any revelatory details about the Hardiner family or secret government operations. Harry Hunters hold out hope that another missing manuscript will resurface that will demystify the author's fate. Abduction theory Although the theory has very little traction, some ufologists have posited that Harry Hardiner was abducted by aliens due to some marker of advanced intelligence found in his writing. Some conspiracy theorists believe that Hardiner received messages from aliens and worked them into his books using steganography. Believers claim it is the only explanation for the lights above Hardiner Hollow on the night of the author's disappearence. However, the only photographic evidence of these lights is a short series of still images from an early digital camera, poor quality, pixelated, and distorted by a flash. Many believe the lights were hallucinations reinforced by these snapshots, headlights, fire or some sort of equipment used to write "MESHARE" in the wall, a swarm of fireflies or bats illuminated from below, or even ball lightning or the effects of swamp gases and earth batteries on the grounds of The Maghreb. Expansionism Rosewire Series ''Hunt and Peck'' Main article: ''Hunt and Peck (novel)'' Originally published in 1992 as Web of Lies (possibly by editorial suggestion), the first entry of the Rosewire series is what the author called an "internet play". Generally considered to be the first appearance of series protagonist Johnny Kite, this sequence of messages between two or three users on a high school's instant messaging system introduces Rhodes Rush High School and the shadowy events happening to its students in the surrounding woods. The "private message system" (Hardiner's term) format was alien and off-putting to readers in 1992, but today Hardiner's form is generally considered familiar territory due to widespread use of instant messaging and email. ''Lights Low'' Main article: ''Lights Low (novel)'' Published in 1993, this companion novel to Hunt and Peck seems to take place simultaneously with the internet play at Rhodes Rush High School, but perhaps not quite on the same plane. Johnny Kite's unnamed (and possibly homosexual) Friend is introduced, as are a cast of characters from Rhodes Rush High School. Some of these characters recur regularly (Max Larry, "Good Golly" Molly, Malli Niner); others appear only in the Rhodes Rush "trilogy." Controversy over a scene of violent sexuality has kept Lights Low on the ALA's Most-Banned List since its publication. Hardiner's only public comment on the issue was, "Those aren't my libraries." ''Halides'' Main article: ''Halides (novel)'' In the conclusion to the so-called "Rhodes Rush Trilogy," the adventures of the high school Johnny Kite and Friend end, setting the stage for the most expansive stages of the series. This novel concludes the Friend's story arc as well as several side-stories introduced in Hunt and Peck. The novel sees the first of Johnny Kite's "points of inflection" (see: Rodonymatology) in the series; his decline into villainy here is counterbalanced with his eventual rise to heroism in the series's penultimate entry. The final moments of the novel were noted as "especially shocking" in the Rex Patch Greenwich Report review; indeed, this is often the most-referenced aspect of the novel in pop culture. ''Green Stone Story'' Main article: ''Green Stone Story (novel)'' This sharp departure from the realism of the Rhodes Rush setting into the fairy-tale realm of Candlewood was purportedly inspired by the Chinese Great Classics, as its story is divided into one hundred chapters roughly grouped into three uneven sections. Wanderer Strata and the woodland cast that she decimates do not return to the series until Rise, but books such as Election Day and Conquest of Algiers allude heavily to events in Green Stone Story through storylines which mimic the fantasy novel in a more realistic setting. Election Day is particularly notable for its Green Stone Story references, where the novel is presented as a well-known classic and the favorite book of the Senator's daughter. ''Election Day'' Main article: ''Election Day ''(play) Most simply, Election Day is the story of a Presidential election set in three American households. This long-form play is comprised of ten interwoven "shows" (each consisting of one to five acts) whose casts are progressively muddled until "the final act", where every character but one reacts to the events of the preceding playlets. Election Day does have an appearance by Johnny Kite, albeit in a highly diminished role. Rex Patch described'' Election Day'' as "the story of democracy on a variety of scales." The critic was quick to lash out at interpretations of the work as a treatise on anarchy, calling it instead "an exploration of the brightest and darkest spots across the spectrum of policy and politics in general." He points specifically to several instances of political discourse from the Senator and the Neuron which quite eloquently make a plea for the righteousness of an absolute totalitarian monarchy. ''Jettison Jemison'' Main article: ''Jettison Jemison (novel)'' This story of superhero antics is widely considered to be the least-integral of the first nine novels in the series. President Jemison is ousted from power and Hunter 9 (see: Rodonymatology) tracks down his peculiarly-powered defenders one by one. Most of the characters from Jettison Jemison do not appear elsewhere in the series, leading some to believe that Jettison Jemison was never intended to be part of the canon. Other readers believe Hardiner's so-called "missing manuscript" would reintroduce these "super" heroes as it tied together the other loose ends of the series. Some critics suggest that Johnny Kite makes a brief unattributed reappearance of User 3. If this is true, Green Stone Story and A Bed remain the only Rosewire novels without Johnny Kite. the black book Main article: ''Rosewire 7 ''(novel) Without an official title, the seventh entry in the Rosewire series is often referred to as "the black book", referring to its original publication in a plain black cover and blackened page edges without identifying text or images. Newer editions of the book mark the spine with seven charcoal-colored rectangles, standing both for its sequence in the Rosewire series and for its seven protagonists and narrators. The author called this novel "the beginning of the end." Most characters from earlier novels, dead and alive, make an appearance of some sort. The Board from Rhodes Rush reemerges, and we are introduced to Center Lake, often mentioned in the first three novels, but never named or shown. A vast overreaching conspiracy is revealed to be the guiding hand behind nearly every action in the novels, and over the course of the black book, characters struggle to free themselves from The Board's grasp before it's too late to save the world. The first Rosewire book to end with a true cliffhanger, the black book was greeted with confusion and hostility from readers of the series, who found the book slow and overly complex. During press stops in 1996 to promote the book, Harry Hardiner asked baffled audiences, "Does no one remember Hunt and Peck?" Though he refused to elaborate further, his question makes more sense after the 1999 publication of Rise; the black book, Conquest of Algiers, and Rise seem to make up a loose trilogy similar in form and execution (if much wider in scope and implication) to Hunt and Peck, Lights Low, and Halides. ''Conquest of Algiers'' Main article: ''Conquest of Algiers (novel)'' The first half of the massive Conquest of Algiers is eerily reminiscent of both the early Rhodes Rush adventures and of Green Stone Story. Two American exchange students, known only as Barnady and St.-Pierre, engage in a deadly game of romance and espionage in a setting seeminly constructed by Hollywood. "The Maghreb" (not to be confused with the true geographical region) seems to be an amalgamation of settings from a number of films, including Lawrence of Arabia, Casablanca, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Ishtar, to name a few. While some readers found this dissonance with the rest of the series off-putting this far into the overarching storyline, those who continued reading past "the turn" (see: Rodonymatology) noted that the first part of the novel functions like a recap of the first seven novels of the series. Critic Rex Patch reminded his readers, "Harry Hardiner was obsessed with fractals; in many ways, Conquest before the turn is Rosewire up to that point, told in microcosm in a new setting with new principals." It is Patch's favorite among the Rosewire novels. The second section of the novel tells the story of Barnaby and St.-Pierre moving along the rim of the Mediterranean to engage in the more global Rosewire storyline; before the end of the book, the two characters find themselves neatly folded into the actions which make up the last several pages of Rosewire 7. ''Rise'' Main article: ''Rise (article)'' Easily the largest and most complex of the Rosewire novels, Rise challenged and alienated most longterm readers who had perservered through the black book and Conquest of Algiers, garnering unfavorable comparisons to such novels as Finnegan's Wake and Marienbad My Love. Despite the dense and frustrating structure in which paragraphs and even parts of sentences are co-opted or shared between multiple, distinct character voices (described by the author as "foamy prose"), readers who "rose above Rise" described it as "Halides on crack", or, in Zachary Osgood's Rosewire Companion, "The rich redistillation of the whole, a strange and perfect culmination in which familiar voices and ideas ricochet like deadly shrapnel off the interior angles of your skull." Critic Rex Patch claims to have interviewed the reclusive author about the 1999 novel in the weeks before his disappearance. While he has to date not released an audio recording of the interview, an edited transcript was published under the title The Shattered Goblet in 2007. Excerpts from the text and various diagirams were posted to the critic's blog, in his words, "to allow more readers to access his difficult climax."' The transcript claims Harry Hardiner wanted his readers to imagine the seventh and eighth novels as "the construction of an enormous glass goblet," and the ninth "is then the filling of that goblet." The author remarks at one point, "The prose isn't chaotic; it's reactive. Readers don't have a comfortable line, shape, or curve; they are reading a foam, in motion, restive, expanding, squirming, alive." And then, later, to describe the cascade of different voices, styles, structure, and microplots which make up the end of Rise, the author said, "There are two problems with a goblet. One: the sides can only go so high before the ends meet, and the whole thing becomes a bubble. Two: goblets break." Debate is still active over the book, with Stephen King writing in'' Entertainment Weekly'', "Some have said Rise performs the integral function on the rest of the series, when, in fact, it performs a full frontal lobotomy." Defenders claim Rise describes such a quantity of events that, were it written in a more traditional form, it may have been as long as the first eight books of the series combined. Detractors point to Rise as proof that the author was months away from a complete mental breakdown. There have been few disputes to this claim. ''A Bed'' Main article: ''A Bed (novel) '' This surreal novel tells the story of two people who share a bed but not necessarily a time or place. This exploration of romance and treatise on the power of love originally led publishers to unanimously delcare A Bed the Gray Havens inspired "endpoint" of the series, more an "epilogue" than a true entry. Later, doubts on the novel's authenticity have led researchers to believe that at the very least, A Bed was meant to be a standalone novel or the beginning of a new series, or more surprisingly, a complete hoax. A 2010 University of Kentucky study determined multiple chapters in the short book were written by someone other than Harry Hardiner, based on a computer algorithm which accounted for syntax and vocabulary from throughout Hardiner's work and criticism. ''Rosewire'' Main article: ''Rosewire 10 (novel)'' Continuation Many authors have taken up the mantle of adding to (or "finishing") the Rosewire series since the rights were abandoned by the Hardiners after the writer was declared dead in 2007. Zachary Osgood, formerly editor of The Rosewire Companion, abandoned his editorial position in order to complete the series with a collection of short stories (The Dependence) and a final novel (The Graceful Leap). Rex Patch produced a series of roman a clef biographies about the author's life, introducing the author into the action of the Rosewire series by way of his Rising (see: Rodonymatology) out of Hardiner Hollow into the wasteland of his novels. Patch also introduced pseudonymic members of the Society of Algiers into the action of his novels, which traced Hardiner's life from birth to Rising. Jonathan Safran Foer added another entry to Patch's "Hardinest" series in 2011 with conceptual novel Mirror Through the Eye . Critical reception Contemporary Since disappearance Controversy A Bed authorship Some scholars, including critic Rex Patch, believe that A Bed does not actually belong to the Rosewire series, but was a project intended to be published after the series itself was finished. In Patch's own words, this means, "Rosewire is unfinished, and that gives me and others hope there's one last Rosewire book out there for us to find." Supporters of this claim point out A Bed's jarring discontinuity with the rest of the series: none of its characters appear elsewhere in the series, and Rosewire had, until that point, consistently affirmed the destructive qualities of love. A Bed's theme of love as savior and moments of "dysphonic prose" led a 2010 University of Kentucky linguistics team to analyze the book's text; the team concluded that portions of the book were definitively written by someone other than Harry Hardiner. Whether the rest of the book was Hardiner's work or "more talented fraud" has not been determined. The revelation and publication of Rosewire 10 in 2008 led many to believe that A Bed was entirely a hoax meant to capitalize on the publicity of Hardiner's disappearence. Rosewire 10 In other media A radio play adaptation of Hunt and Peck (heavily reworked and using the title Web of Lies) aired on NPR in November 1997. In Simpsons episode "The PTA Disbands", a character shouts "The PTA has disbanded!" before leaping from the conference room window. In Lights Low, Burnzlandt the Oilman leaps from the boardroom window after shouting, "The Board has disbanded!" Sufjan Steven's song "Onward Ho, Across the Maghreb, Into the Plot Device, Go! " was partly inspired by Conquest of Algiers. Sesame Street parodied "the shattered goblet" moment of Rise with a skit called "The Shattered Muppet ". A single kite-shaped muppet continually breaks and multiplies until the horde covers the screen like a frothy foam. It was meant to demonstrate logarithmic growth and overpopulation. Tie-in books Rupert Smythe-Pryce's bestseller Harry Hunters is a nonfiction novel describing the misadventures of a band of authors and other celebrities devoting their time to finding the vanished writer. The celebrities are identified only through pseudonyms, though to date at least two original "Harry Hunters" have been identified ("Max Larry" was without doubt mystery novelist Maxence Lawrence, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt came forward as "Youngblood" in an interview promoting Inception). Harry Hunters is laid out in episodes loosely collated by theme under headings titled "Lights Low", "Election Day", and so forth. Zachary Osgood produced and edited three editions of The Rosewire Companion. He has since written several short stories and one book to "complete" the Rosewire series. (See "Continuation", above.) After his resignation as president of the Society of Algiers, Rex Patch has edited two further editions of the Companion, bringing the total number to 5. Re-Election Day is a series of political allegories written as short plays in the style of Hardiner's fifth book, replacing Rosewire characters with personalities from the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election. Contributors include writers Dave Eggers and Tracy Letts, and Vice President Al Gore. Adaptations See Also Notes Bibliography External Links Category:People Category:Browse Category:Harry Hardiner